Adult Social Care 2011–2013: Holding ourselves to account

Local account

The report Adult Social Care 2011–2013: Holding ourselves to account explains how Hampshire County Council is spending your money on adult social care in Hampshire. We have also looked at how well other councils do to see if they are any better than us.

This report gives us a chance to tell you about our plans for next year and to ask you for any ideas on how we could get better.

Summary of the report

About Hampshire

Hampshire County Council is one of the largest counties in England. We have just over a million people living in a mix of towns and countryside. There are some very rich and very poor areas.

We support nearly 42,000 people in all with services that include care at home, residential, nursing and extra care as well as day care and respite care.

42% of all the money Hampshire County Council spends is on adult social care. In 2012/13, we spent £319.3 million on providing services.

Our plans up to 2015 include:

enabling people to have choices and be in control

asking communities to give more support

to carry on doing a good job by providing good and safe services

more staff training to learn how to get better

We know things are getting more difficult. Nearly 1 in 4 people are over 65 years old and this number is going up all the time as more people live longer. People also need more support.

Support to older people is the biggest part of our spending but we all know there is less money to spend at the moment. hampshire County Council is following a plan called 'Making it Real' which is a way of checking how well we are all doing.

'Making it Real'

We are working with people who use services, and carers, to change social care so that it provides what each person wants and needs within the community.

We asked service users and carers which of the 6 areas of Making it Real were most important. the service users and carers said they all were, so we have included them all here:

information and advice: having the information I need, when I need it

help communities support themselves and others: keeping friends, family and place

care and support that can change to meet my needs: my support, my own way

staff: my support staff

risk: feeling in control and safe

personal budgets and self-funding

The future

Money is tight and there will be even less for us to spend in the future so to make services better we have to work well with others. There will be more changes including a new law on social care. We will also look at ways of sharing services with others, being able to change quickly and always giving the message that we are ‘open for business’.